Quick good-bye beach

 Time to head back to the cabin, with a heart full of love!  What a wonderful trip this has been.  I feel like I've had some really great family reconnection time, and seen so many things!  We went by Coronado for a last look at the ocean before heading to the airport.  Here's the pic I took, it's not great in the traditional sense, but it does reflect how it feels to visit.  Everything just layered up with happiness and love!

The day all of our plans changed

 Well, we had a plan, but we ended up doing totally different things.  We were going to walk around a meditation garden that Deborah has been wanting to go see, but when we got there, it turned out they are closed on Mondays.  So, I guess that's for another trip!  Luckily there was a gorgeous overlook nearby for us to regroup somewhere pretty.  H Street Overlook was awesome!  Easy parking, amazing gorgeous view, and dolphins!!!!!  A pod of maybe about 8, quite close to shore, just going along doing dolphin things!  

From there we went to La Jolla, trying to see leopard sharks in their nursery in the clear water, but we were too late in the day for that already.  We did have gorgeous views, and saw just ridiculous numbers of pelicans and cormorants!   A very nice walk which my knees did well on.  And then when we were getting back into the car, a juvie red-tailed hawk was right there!  So we paused again for that. 

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153421512

Then down to the sea lion beach, more great nature sightings.   There were ground squirrels there, my first time getting a good look at them.  And of course sea lions, chasing each other around, hanging out, they are always a treat to see. And look how beautiful the beach next door is!

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153422788

From there, back home and picking up Mom for lunch in Seaport Village.  As we were waiting for a table, a sharp-shinned hawk flew into a tree right by us!  So I reported that as an incidental.  Lunch was amazing.  Nice place on the water, again with the gorgeous view.  And I got huevos rancheros and they were so delicious!  I would definitely go back to that place again!  The rest of the day I just kept thinking back on that meal :-) We walked around Seaport Village, Mom wanted to look around and do some shopping and maybe find a treasure.  Well the treasure that we found was ice cream, thank you Ben and Jerry's!  

Another day, another boat

 We changed our plans.  Originally  from having a relaxing start to the day, hitting the boat for a couple of hours and then heading to nice dinner.  We ended up getting on the boat earlier, having a nice long wonderful boat ride, and needing a little bit of recovery time before nice dinner!  

This time the boat was a fast motorboat, and we did some zooming!  It was really really fun.  First we slowly got out of the harbor

Then it was zooming time!

I again took out my binoculars and we spotted lots of stuff, the highlight for me was a flock (raft?) of at least 175 surf scoters!  They are a cool looking duck with white on their necks that at first fools you into thinking they are maybe buffleheads.  But they are bigger, the beak is wrong, and they have other markings that will leave you doubting until you look it up, and find they are scoters!  That was pretty great.  We went super far, further than Deborah had gone before, so that was really cool.  Again a lot of sandpipers I wasn't able to ID, even though I looked at some in a guide last night.  I did see some that I was confident about, including a long-billed curlew, which was really cool!  Oh and some brant which were really hard to ID.  Looking up a black duck with a white neck ring was useless.  Merlin eventually came up with it, but only on try 3 or 4 of going through the process.  But we got there!  I really need to study my sandpipers and plovers etc. for next time I'm here.  Here's the checklist:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153361223

Here's my best bird pic, of the brant. I miss my superzoom!  

Then we had a really fantastic dinner at a nice restaurant on the water.  I wore a skirt!  So fancy!  It was beautiful and delicious and I got to spend some really great quality time with Mom.  

Then back to Deborah's to again basically collapse exhausted!

San Diego, Canyon and Boat day!

 I got to San Diego last night, and today was a big day.  We started the day with a walk with the local Audubon Society in Tecolote Canyon, it was wonderful!  Deborah came along and loved it too.  Great guides, great group, easy walk, lots of birds.  Great views of hummingbirds, hawks, scrub jays (a favorite of Deborah), bushtits, wrentits, just a lot of cool stuff.  Here's the checklist

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153297743

I only took one pic from the boat, I sort of forgot:

And here we all are on the doc afterwards!

Then back home for a bit of recuperating, and then we picked up Mom and met Kat and Charlie, and went on a boat!  This kind of boat is called a Duffy, and we went out on Mission Bay, which is calmer.  The combo gave us a nice smooth ride for Mom, and Charlie brought some trains to play with.  I of course brought my binoculars and Kat and I counted just so many great blue herons!  And cormorants.  It was pretty amazing.  Also some sandpipers but I could not ID them, so I didn't enter them.  There was one mystery grebe, which ebird wanted more info about, but I didn't have any more info for them.  I didn't get a pic, and the light was bad, so, sorry ebird!  A highlight for me was a big group of about 40 skimmers!  They are so cool.  Didn't see them skimming, just hanging out.  Hopefully next time!  :-) It was so so wonderful to be out on the water!  Here's the checklist:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S153289672

Then we took Mom back home and headed to Kat's place for kebobs for dinner and some Charlie time, a house tour, and some kitty time.  It was great!  I got to hold a purring cat on my lap!  <3 

Back home to Deborah's, worn out from a wonderful day.